


Wasteland

by blackmaggiecat



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Ian is looking for his boyfriend, M/M, Shit goes down, The Milkoviches find him
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-17
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-08-31 14:41:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8582350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackmaggiecat/pseuds/blackmaggiecat
Summary: The last five months of Ian Gallagher's life have been hell. Five months of endlessly trekking down the highways of Illinois. Five months since he's seen his family. Five months of searching desperately for his boyfriend, Caleb. Five months of fighting for his life against fucking zombies, as if his life didn't suck enough. Enter Mickey Milkovich and his snarky sister Mandy, a pair of fellow ex-southsiders with a pickup truck and more ammo than they know what to do with, and Ian is in for the ride of his life. Maybe the zombie apocalypse isn't so bad, after all.





	1. Prologue

The thin, cotton sheets reeked of piss. It wasn't exactly surprising to Ian at that point; he knew he wasn't even close to the first person to crash in the (musty, cheap-looking) motel room. He knew that dozens of people had filtered in and out over the last few months, sweating and bleeding and, yes, pissing all over the sheets and only a fraction of them bothering to clean them at all before they moved on. Ian himself had done it a number of times. It was disgusting, but it's the way things were now.

He sat down on the putrid sheets, trying to breathe through his mouth as best he could as he tried to unlace his boots. He had stepped into a fucking pothole a mile or so back, and jammed his ankle. Even as his fingers traced over the skin as he tried to remove his shoes, he could feel how badly it was swollen, probably sprained. He cursed himself for being so careless. How the hell was he supposed to keep moving if he could barely walk?

He tried to remember his ninth grade health class and how he had been instructed to treat sprains. Back in the Gallagher household, the procedure had mostly just been "walk it off" and with Caleb...

Ian shook off that thought. Now was not the time. There was nothing he could do about Caleb if he couldn't fix his fucking sprain.

All he could remember from his shitty health class was that the girl who sat next to him during that unit had really strong perfume that he didn't like and he had subsequently spent most of the time looking down at his book and subtly covering his nose. Fuck. He remembers something about having to raise and ice it, which did fuck all for him considering he had no ice, and hadn't seen any since the power grid had gone down. He flipped onto his back, wincing as his ankle smacked the bed frame when he bounced.

He carded a finger through the unruly snarls of his hair. He had, in the chaos of the evacuation, forgotten to grab such elementary things as a hairbrush as he frantically packed his bag, and he was slowly growing to regret it. His formerly close-cropped red hair had grown long over the months on the road, and yanking at the knots with his fingers did little to help. Once he crashed somewhere with a proper mirror, he would use his hunting knife to cut it back to a more manageable length. Until then, he had found himself searching convenience stores for hair ties, with limited success.

As much as Ian wanted to just pass out (he'd made it thirteen miles today before he rolled his ankle), he knew he had to survey his surroundings. He couldn't afford to not make sure he was safe, and he needed any supplies he could scavenge, though by the looks of this place there an ant much to find.

There was dresser, probably empty, with a bloodstain on the wall he knew better than to address. A TV, screen shattered. A desk, complete with a complimentary notepad that had all the pages torn off and an analogue clock that declared it to be 2:38 despite the fact that it was steadily growing dark outside. A safe, in the closet, the door nearly yanked off. And, of course, his army-issue backpack, open and tossed on the floor, pill bottles, cans of food and spare ammo strewn haphazardly across the floor. He was sort of disappointed, despite the fact that this was near-exactly what he expected. It had been the same in the house he had stayed in last night, and the motel a few nights before. In the shambles that society had become, cleanliness and order came second to survival. If keeping your crashing-place clean wasn't actively keeping you safe, it was unnecessary.

It's like southside 2.0, Ian thought, and a smile crept into his lips. Back in the Gallagher household, everyone was fighting to keep the heat and electricity on, and nothing else really mattered.

Thinking of his family brought a sad little pang to Ian's chest. He hadn't seen any of the Gallaghers since everything went down. He knew they were probably fine; his family was nothing if not tough and surviving. Carl was probably ecstatic an learning to take head shots at their formerly deceased neighbors.

His family, in one way or another, had spent their whole life accidentally training for the zombie apocalypse.

Because that was what this was. The fucking zombie apocalypse.

Five months in, Ian still had trouble believing it.


	2. Chapter One: I Hit The Bottom (I Brought A Shovel)

Ian was woken by a rattling in the room next to him.

Five months ago, Ian wouldn't have given the noise a second thought. But this was not five months ago; the noise could mean the difference between life and death.

He shot to his feet, rubbing sleep from his eyes with one hand and grabbing his piece from under his pillow with the other, loading it effortlessly. Like hell was he gonna get jumped by zombies at night. For a second, he debated whether it was worth it to go out and investigate or if he should wait for another sign to go investigate but fuck it, he was up already. Besides, if he was sleeping next to a nest, he should know.

He crept out of the room, gun in hand, silently counting to three before creaking open the door.

Upon opening it, he didn't see a full nest, which was good. In fact, he didn't see anything at all, but he _swore_ he'd heard something-

Before he could really finish his thought, he felt himself being slammed to the ground. Luckily, he had developed quick reflexes from living in the Gallagher house, and flipped agilely onto his back, pointing his gun up at... a girl?

The girl had thick hair that had one been dyed green, but her auburn were showing loud and clear. Her skin was sun-burnt and peeling, and a scar ran down the left side of her face, clearly from a knife. But, more importantly, she had a glock aimed directly between Ian's eyes.

The two of them stared at each other for a second before the girl registered the obvious. "You're human?"

"Yea, no shit, man," Ian mumbled, clicking the safety onto his gun and holding his hands up defensively.

The girl didn't waver. "You bit?" she asked, grip on her weapon unrelenting, which Ian understood. No one wanted to live near the bitten, not even for a night.

"No," Ian responded, "you?"

She shook her head, clicking the safety back onto her gun and putting it in the waistband of her cargo pants before offering Ian a hand, which he accepted. "Celeste," she offered once Ian was on his feet, and Ian nodded curtly. "Ian."

Celeste pulled out a cigarette, clenching it awkwardly between her teeth as she patted the pockets of her scrappy cargo shorts. "You need something, Ian?"

Ian shook his head. "I was just swinging by to see if you were a human or a concern," he responded, and a smirk hitched up on Celeste's lips. Ian thought quickly, and said "actually, you got ice? Or something cold? Sprained my ankle a little while back."

Celeste snorted, finally locating her lighter and lighting up her cigarette. "I ain't seen ice since before all of this started, hon. Your best bet is to wrap that shit and pray."

Ian snorted. He made a move for the door, but Celeste grabbed his forearm (lightly, none of the earlier adrenaline or strength present). "You wanna stay and smoke a minute? I haven't seen another person in weeks."

Ian's heart swelled a bit at that. With the cigarette in between her teeth, Celeste almost looked like Debbie, Auburn hair and heart-shaped face, something undeniably innocent and vulnerable in her eyes, and somehow he found himself saying, "Yea, sure."

She smiled brightly, offering him her pack of Malboros before plopping down onto her bed. Ian gingerly took up a place beside her, taking a cigarette and leaning over for her to light it. Nicotine hit his lungs and God, he'd missed this. He needed to see if there was any cigarettes left in the next corner store he ran into. He wondered if his siblings had found any. For Lip's sake, he hoped so.

Celeste made no move to speak, and he was sort of grateful. This time last year, Ian would have been eager, talking nonsensically, but that sense of aggressive social-ness had disappeared with his brief social interactions, and he'd learned to just soak up human presence instead of trying to forge real connection.

Some part of him still wondered about the girl next to him. He wondered what happened to her face, why her hair was green. But everyone in the fucking zombie apocalypse had a story, and filling his head with all of them would distract him from what mattered: The Gallagher's story. Kev and V's. And, most importantly, Caleb's, or rather at what point their stories would intertwine again.

Caleb's name still brought a pang of longing in his chest, but it was dulled now. Just like Ian's personality, his morals. Having to mow through dozens of not-quite-humans did that to you.

He didn't even notice when his cancer stick became nothing more than a nub in his hand until he found himself squashing it's remains under the sole of his army-issue boots. Celeste smiled at him, a bit sadly, before walking over to the door and opening it, a clear direction to leave.

"Good luck, Ian," she said as he passed her back to his own room. He nodded, slightly, before dragging himself into his own temporary shelter.

He was so tired didn't even notice that the sun-burnt girl's light fingers had pulled his gun out of his waistband.

* * *

When he woke this time, there was sunlight streaming through the boarded-up windows, glancing onto his face, the sheets, his empty backpack and... nothing else.

"What the fuck?" he exclaimed aloud, sitting bolt upright, reaching for his gun under his pillow and not finding it. He searched under all of the furniture in the room, in all of the nooks and crannies. He found one of his handguns, a machete, a can of Campbell's soup, but the rest of his stuff was just... gone.

He was walking, befuddled, and frustrated, back over to the bed, when something caught his eyes: a half-empty pack of cigarettes on the nightstand, certainly not his, with some sort of scrawl on the front. As he got closer, he could make out a message:

_Thanks for the company last night, and for all your shit. Hope there's no hard feelings. Good luck, Ian. -C_

"Son of a BITCH!" Ian exclaimed, nearly crushing the box in his fist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> now that i've got this mess settled, our lovely milkoviches will show up next chapter :)


End file.
